The BBC has been suffering from a “terrifying” institutional “complacency,” senior Government sources warned, as the national broadcaster was engulfed in its worst crisis in more than a decade.
Tim Davie resigned late on Sunday as director-general of the BBC as the corporation prepares to apologise on Monday over a botched clip of Donald Trump.
Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, also resigned after a torrid week in which the editorial judgment and future viability of the entire organisation were called into question.
“I think there’s been a terrifying complacency at the top of the BBC,” a senior Government source told The i Paper. “It’s been a constantly frustrating process of them saying [to ministers] ‘nothing to see here and none of your business’.”
The final straw for the pair were revelations about an edition of Panorama broadcast last year in which two different parts of a 2021 speech by Trump were spliced together to make it seem as if he had told supporters to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell”.
Davie resigned from his post after a leaked memo criticised a 2024 Panorama programme about TrumpThe resignations follow the leak of a dossier written by Michael Prescott that had been sent to the BBC board. Prescott was an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board for three years before leaving in June. The memo was passed to the Daily Telegraph last week sparking internal soul-searching and accusations of a right-wing attack on the corporation itself. Some are calling it the BBC’s worst crisis since the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012.
In the last week, the BBC has faced criticism for its failure to grasp the seriousness surrounding the allegation of doctoring the clip and apologise quickly, despite internal pressure to do so. Samir Shah, the BBC chair, is expected to apologise for the mistake on Monday, a week after it emerged, although the BBC itself reported a row over the contents of that statement.
The US President posted a message on social media in which he celebrated Davie’s downfall. “The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught “doctoring” my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th,” Trump said.
The Panorama failure was just the latest in many examples of the BBC being slow to acknowledge mistakes had been made, let alone deal with them. Government sources said when the BBC did not immediately take the punk band Bob Vylan off air during its broadcast of the Glastonbury festival, editorial staff initially refused to accept they could have reacted differently.
“They were saying there was nothing more to be done,” a source familiar with the conversations between the BBC and ministers said.
The i Paper has approached the BBC for comment.
At the music festival, the punk duo led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]” during their June performance. Only later did Shah admit the decision not to pull the live feed was “unquestionably an error of judgement”. Davie also apologised.
The BBC has also publicly acknowledged that “more could and should have been done sooner” to address the historical misconduct allegations against former MasterChef host Gregg Wallace.
The corporation also committed a “serious breach” of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, media watchdog Ofcom ruled in October.
The BBC’s Royal Charter is up for renewal at the end of 2027, setting out its agreement with the Government, which determines the BBC’s terms of operation. Among other things, the charter sets out the funding model of the BBC, including the licence fee, about which there are growing questions.
“Younger people don’t watch live TV. They don’t watch the BBC, they don’t watch iPlayer, they don’t understand what they’re getting for it, and they think it’s a subscription like Netflix,” the senior Government source said. “The only people who watch live TV and the BBC regularly are the people who don’t pay for the licence fee – that’s the over-75s.”
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The downfall of Davie could put the Government into a stronger negotiating position when it comes to charter renewal. “They’re losing public support and confidence. They’ve lost the trust of their own staff, and people don’t get the licence fee,” the source added.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is understood to have had a good working relationship with Davie. But she is also understood to have been taken aback when entering office to find such a close relationship between civil servants and BBC management. The previous Conservative administration had cycled through so many ministers in such a short space of time that civil servants had built close relationships with BBC insiders, Labour sources said.
Nonetheless, Government sources also praised Shah for improving workplace culture at the BBC, including weekly sandwich lunches with junior staff. “He’s been very hands-on,” the source said.
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